


Abandon Yourself

by SpaceDisgrace



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Big Brother Shiro (Voltron), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Gay, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, I really thought this show had potential, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Multi, Team as Family, Whump, but then season 8 lol, i guess this counts as a rewrite as it takes place as an alternate ending to season one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 20:18:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18373349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceDisgrace/pseuds/SpaceDisgrace
Summary: Alternate Season One Ending (may lead to a whole cannon divergence)Keith has made a lot of stupid, reckless and hot headed decisions in his life. But leaving the safety of the red lion to take on Zarkon in hand-to-hand has to be the peak of his stupidity. Why on earth did he think it was a good idea, no one knows, but his team leaving him behind at the mercy of the space witch was probably a reasonable response on their end. After all, if Keith could abandon himself, he would do it too.





	Abandon Yourself

 

He didn’t wake with a start, it took him a while to realise he was awake. Everything was numb with pain, his head throbbed and his arms burned. His whole body was writhing in a way that made everything fuzzy. It was hard to tell the difference between having his eyes closed or having them open.

He tried to move, but something tugged at the muscle and skin and he had the vague and wildly helpful thought – _something isn’t quite right here._

Keith wiggled his finger, feeling an inlay of metal around them. He tensed the muscle of his calf to find something cold was pulling at the flesh. Keith decided there and then, something is very much not right.

He opened his eyes, this time painfully aware they were actually open and blinked. Purple and black took up most of his vision, and whilst Keith didn’t think of himself as smart, he was pretty proud of himself for figuring out where he was.

He was on a Galra ship.

His breathing began to quicken, breaths hitching and catching in his throat. _Oh shit, oh fuck, oh god,_ he was in a fucking Galra prison.

Keith squirmed, the bones and muscles on his back tensing against a cold metal surface. He was in a Galra prison on what only could be described as a surgical table.

His eyes filled with tears, his breathing so ragged it almost hurt more than the strange pinch of metal on his skin. He was going to pass out – oh god, he was going to die.

_Patience yields focus._

Keith took in a deep breath, tensing the muscles in his hands over and over. Just calm down, he needed to calm down. He needed to-

Something to his right clicked, and Keith felt a cold liquid ooze into his upper arm. He would have panicked more if his eyes didn’t grow so heavy, and suddenly he didn’t much mind about anything. He was that damn tired.

 

When Keith next woke up it was also without a start. Again, he slowly pushed his way to awareness, feeling sleep drip of him like a receding tide - at first it was peaceful, but then he was just left laying alone and aching with the cold – leaving him awake and unhappy.

Someone had their hands on his face and when Keith tried to open his eyes they held them closed with their thumbs, their nails digging into his skin. _What if they crush my eyes with their hands?_

Keith’s breathing started to grow ragged again, the person holding him tried to shush him. It didn’t much help.

He heard that same click to his right and the same cold liquid injected into his arm. He expected himself to pass out, instead everything numbed.

It was like someone had cut his disconnection from his brain to his senses. He was aware, and aware he was aware, but hearing and feeling felt like it was happening to someone else.

The person removed their thumbs from his eyes and he opened them to see a woman looking down at him. No – not a woman, it was that space witch woman person... Galran.

_Was it Galran, or did you just call a singular Galra a Galra. Maybe it was Galranese, like japanese. Or maybe it was Galri, like the word cactus became cacti._

Keith was aware he should be panicking, he didn’t though, it was like he was looking at the space witch through many layers of thick glass. She was there, but she couldn’t quite get him, right?

“Hello,” she said, her voice warbling in the fog of his awareness.

He should say something threatening, something to tell her that she didn’t scare him, that she could do whatever she wanted and he would not break. Shiro had done it, and Shiro was the best person Keith had ever met, Keith wouldn’t let Shiro down, not in a million years. He searched for the words to convey this to the witch.

“Hi,” he said. _Nailed it Keith._

“Your friends have betrayed you.” She sneered.

“Uhh… no they haven’t.” Keith didn’t remember any betrayal, he didn’t remember a lot really, but he was pretty sure he was smart enough to remember that. He wasn’t that stupid, was he?

“How else do you think you got here? They left you to die, they took your lion and left you here to die. They betrayed you.”

“Okay, sure.”

She raised her eyebrow, squinting her eyes. She sighed. “We’ll try again later.”

Keith heard the click and fell back into that abyss.

 

The third time Keith woke was with a desperate need to pee. He tried to sit up but found the pinching metal held him back.

“You’re awake?” said a voice.

Keith groaned.

“Stop moving, Terran, you are going to damage yourself.”

“I need to pee.”

“Oh... I can’t help with that.”

Keith tried to roll his head away from the voice, it was low and loud and annoying, but when he moved his head, he felt something tug under his skin at the base of his skull.

He snapped. The haze of sleep plummeted away, leaving an empty space in his chest that soon filled up with dread. Keith was in a _fucking_ Galra prison, he was chained down and he had something sticking out of the back of his skull. It went under his skin and, oh god, what if it went to his brain?

What were they doing to his brain?

Keith tried to raise his arms to grab at the tubing at the nape of his neck, but his arms were held down, the pinching metal now a burning vice. Keith looked down at himself and saw tubes and wires and needles sticking out of his body, bruises mottled around the points of injection. Blood was smeared across his chest.

Keith was really _fucking_ panicking now.

Hands tried to hold him down, but he pushed desperately against them. He felt the tube at the nape of his neck snag and Keith blacked out.

When his vision returned the witch was looking down at him, and this time he didn’t have that haze to hold back his fear, no, his fear was squeezing his throat, demanding his attention.

“Glad to see you’re awake.”

Keith tried to move but felt bindings on his wrists and ankles. _When had they got there?_

The witch put a hand to his face and wiped a tear away. “I thought we agreed crying was beneath you. Or have you forgot.”

“What?”

“Oh I do believe he has forgot. That’s good, this is going faster than I expected.”

“What is?”

A high pitched whirring sound echoed throughout the room and Keith felt his mind disconnect, shoving him backwards twenty layers behind glass.

The fear ebbed away, snipped apart, numbness setting in again.

“Good, that’s good.” Said the witch. “Lets start for today.”

 

The last time Keith woke was with a start so fast he nearly slammed his head into the person leaning over him. Hands shoved his shoulders back down onto the table, and he wondered what the witch was going to do next. He pushed against those hands, twisting his hips to wiggle out of the witches grasp.

His momentum carried him of the bed and he landed hard on his side. Someone yelled at him and Keith brought his knees up to his chest, curling away from the sound. Hands tried to grab him again and he thrashed. He didn’t want to listen to it. Not right now.

Someone said something, Keith kicked at the noise. He hated the talking, it was all the witch did. All she did was talk. About nothing, about her plans, about how his friends had left him, how they took the red lion and flew away through a wormhole.

When the Galra took Allura he suggested leaving her to Zarkon, he hated himself for saying it, but he was just trying to be practical, needs of the many and all that. But he knew, he just knew they thought he was being hateful, regular hateful and horrid Keith.

The witch had talked at length about how he was left for dead, and Keith wouldn’t be surprised. The others probably thought leaving Keith was right, they probably thought that abandoning him to Zarkon was the safest bet, because they had taken his lion and had Allura, what use was he, why would they risk everything to come back for him?

Keith fought against the voice, he knew the witch was right, but he didn’t want to hear any more of it, he couldn’t, not anymore.

He pulled his hands up to his ears and curled in on himself, he felt pathetic and weak. He just wanted to be left alone. Please… _Leave me alone._

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there!  
> I'm an aspiring author and writing fanfiction helps me to improve my writing skill without having to invent the worlds and characters. It lets me see if the writing style, character arcs, and such are well written and also it's super fun!  
> This is my first Voltron works and honestly I'm a little nervous about it, so I'm only posting the prologue and if its something that others are interested in I will post the rest.  
> Constructive criticism is always welcome, thanks so much for checking this out, have a good day!!


End file.
